Critical Fatwa

Week of September 14, 2005

All hail Dr. Demento, who has carried the torch of the novelty song for many years. For we are not some dour Radiohead fan who requires stone-faced "important" music. But novelty can be taken too far, and Universal Records has abused the idea with its new album, Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits. To even type that makes us vomit a little, and so we must issue a fatwa!

We did not mind the Crazy Frog ringtone -- although if someone we spent time with used it, we would have beaten them about the head, face, chest and neck. We did not even mind when Crazy Frog's version of "Axel F" hit the charts in Britain, for it prevented Coldplay from reaching No. 1 -- and that fact (and the song) is hilarious. But to release a whole CD of the gibbering amphibian scatting over such beloved classics as "Pump Up the Jam," "Who Let The Frog Out" (there is the vomit again) and "That Goddamn Six Flags Techno Song" (a.k.a. The Vengaboys' "We Like to Party")? Congrats, Universal, for making the least significant album since William Hung's third disc (a third album, Koch? That's a side fatwa!).

Universal, we can only hope you've implanted homing chips into these discs, so that when the revolution comes we can find those who purchased them and cast them from these shores. But we doubt it. So may you be forced to actually listen to this that you have created, over and over and over again. It is written.